This application seeks continued funding for the Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC) CNRU now called Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC). Originally funded in 2005, our NORC stimulates growth and development of nutrition and obesity research at PBRC. It provides the infrastructure to promote costeffective and high quality research. It also provides the necessary environment to stimulate collaborations between investigators including translational research and clinical activities in nutrition and obesity. Finally, the Pennington NORC is a springboard for career development and training of young scientists in the field of obesity. The PBRC NORC meets the goals and objectives of NI DDK's Nutrition Obesity Research Centers as presented in RFA-DK-09-006. Our efforts attracted new and established investigators to the field of obesity and nutrition research and resulted in an expanded research base. It is our intention to continue to grow NORC activities, and to continue development of state-of-the-art methods in molecular biology and clinical investigation. The research faculty and facilities at PBRC are positioned to expand the scope of nutrition research and facilitate both the discovery and clinical application of new scientific knowledge in nutrition and obesity, particularly within the chosen PBRC NORC theme, "Nutritional Programming: Environmental and Molecular Interactions."